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It is very hard to identify which risk factor to address. I suppose that there are a number of such factors, one of which is the potential volume of people who go through the system, because it is the only option available. What work could be done to find out what percentage of those people would be immediately removed from the system if other options were available?

Another factor is the delays caused by a current shortage of staff on the ground, while a third is the throughput of people who, once they have presented to A and E, should be transferred somewhere else, but there is no somewhere else for them to go. The somewhere else is at capacity, too, so that creates a bottleneck in the system.

I presume that the answer is that all three risk factors are involved. Are there any specific areas where immediate action could be taken to alleviate the situation more quickly?

Perhaps I should declare an interest, convener, having gone through that process of getting a planned A and E appointment. Such appointments were news to me, but the approach seemed to work reasonably well.

In the interests of time, I will ask my final question, which is on appendix 3. I am new to the committee, but I am aware that you have produced previous reports on the NHS and made very specific recommendations to the Scottish Government. Appendix 3 contains nine key recommendations covering a wide range of areas for consideration. My analysis shows that, of the nine, five are in progress, limited progress has been made on three and no progress at all has been made on one; in other words, none of those recommendations has been completely implemented. Is that a normal state of affairs at this point? Without giving a personal opinion, are you content that the direction of travel is a good one? I am thinking in particular of the NHS recovery plan, which, although clearly important post the pandemic, has seen no progress. How have you reached that conclusion?

Is it inevitable that the health budget will reach 50 per cent of all Scottish Government spend? That sounds like a massive figure—perhaps one that the public is not even quite aware of sometimes. Could that be prevented?

I have a lot of questions, so I will rattle through rather than ask the whole panel to respond. I ask for brief responses.

That is a valid conversation. The reason why I raised the issue is that those of us sitting round the table, and the public who are watching, are absolutely right to be outraged by £400 boozy lunches and people flying first class for training courses.

Either you knew that there were issues but said that there were not any in the report, in which case the report was false, or you missed all those issues and, if that is the case, how could you have missed them when Audit Scotland found them?

Yes, but my question is not about any of that. My question is about your role and the role of the gentleman sitting to your right and the fact that, as two members of the board, you failed to identify any of the corporate governance issues in your annual report. Why?

He was not under investigation, but he was clearly under a lot of pressure to respond to a very serious allegation by Audit Scotland about corporate governance. While that process was going on, and you were, I presume, waiting on a response, he handed in his notice. He was required to give you six months’ notice so, rather than have him hanging around for six months, was he allowed to leave with immediate effect and a six-month pay-off?

This is a wide-ranging report, but I appreciate that we are short of time, so I will focus on specific areas, particularly the operational performance of the NHS, which affects the public more than some of the other issues.

The first obvious area to cover is where we are on waiting time targets. In that respect, the report makes grim reading. Albeit that the exhibit goes up only to September 2023, it seems to me that none of the eight key metrics on performance against waiting times is being met, and that some are failing by quite some margin—in particular, accident and emergency treatment times, the standard that cancer treatment should start within 62 days, and the 12-week in-patient and out-patient targets. What is your general view on whether things are getting slightly better or whether the long-term trend, certainly from 2018 to now, has been a trajectory of increased waiting times?

Some of my questions may give you the opportunity to say what you were about to say, Kersti.

Before we look at wider issues with other public bodies, I will start with the issue of WICS itself. I am new to the committee and did not attend the previous meeting, although I watched the footage. I thought that that was uncomfortable, but this is 10 times worse.

I am hearing about a wide range of issues. People who worked in the organisation got a number of what you might call perks in working practices, including free personal eye care, boozy lunches, retail vouchers, expensive training courses at Harvard, business class flights and so on. None of that would really ring any alarm bells for anyone who has worked in the private sector, where that is all quite common practice and is how businesses work. However, WICS is not in the private sector. It seems to me that there is a private sector culture of spending profits and shareholders’ money, but it is in the public sector.

Has the organisation been run like a business in the private sector instead of like a body in the public sector?

Was there any financial payment?